Originally Posted by
jsloan
Sorry, that’s ridiculous. UA is still very much a hub-and-spoke airline, and if you don’t believe me, just take a look at the route map of a carrier like WN. I don’t deny the fact that you can now fly longer routes with smaller aircraft, but that logic really only serves to turn many two-transfer domestic flights into one-transfer flights. Not everyone either (a) lives in a major city or (b) wants to travel to a major city — and that’s even leaving out international flights. UA is probably never going to fly AUS-NRT, but I suspect I’m not the only AUS-based passenger who occasionally crosses the Pacific.
A southeast hub that focused on allowing efficient, one-stop transportation from the southeast and south-central US to South America and the Caribbean would be a real hub, not just a ‘focus city,’ and could potentially make sense in UA’s route map if they can find a place with enough O&D demand to make it worthwhile.
I agree that the days of airline hubs at STL and MCI are over, but ORD and IAH fulfill the traditional role of a hub just fine. It’s just, it can no longer only be about connecting passengers — you need to blend high O&D demand with efficient transfers for connecting passengers.
The way I always thought about the question was very much just like what you wrote. It was only after reconsidering my thoughts that I was missing the bigger picture. If UA or any other airline was truly dominated by a hub-and-spoke mentality then it would it really matter where they put their hubs as long as they make geographic sense? Does anyone think UA could move their ORD hub to MKE or IND and have it be successful on the same scale as it is at ORD? Heck, their market share in either of those cities would instantly dwarf what it it at ORD. To the traveller going from La Crosse to Jacksonville, it wouldn't matter in the least.
By the same token, if hub-and-spoke is really what it's all about then UA should start a hub at ATL to serve the southeast/Florida. There's nothing DL can do for a person going from Grand Rapids to Ft. Myers that UA can't do regardless of whether UA's hub is in ATL or Valdosta (just for fun). As long as they fly the routes, it doesn't matter to the passenger.
So why have hubs disappeared from most non-large cities and why are there almost no dual-hubs (ORD is the only that comes to mind)? What I think is the obvious answer is market capture in very large cities is the legacy 3's real bread and butter when it comes to making money. By no means am I claiming the L3 airlines don't care about connecting domestic passengers or don't actively try to do so. I don't think I made any such claim in my prior post, either. It's just that's not where their money is largely made and so it's why UA has a midwest hub at ORD and certainly not at IND. Now when it comes to connecting passengers, they by all means want to do it for international travel and again, that objective dovetails with dominating the market of large cities.